Today’s the day for the ordination-on-the-river, and props to the Diocese of Pittsburgh for not ignoring it, for offering a thorough, grounded Q & A on the matter Isn’t denial of the sacraments and excommunication extreme? The church doesn’t excommunicate […]

Thanks to Clare in the comments for pointing out this story: I think the situation is that a parish that was, in the words of one, "free-wheeling" and dominated by a sympathy with the cause of the Aboriginal peoples was […]

A few articles from over the weekend: Charlotte Hays on NOW’s 40th anniversary celebration: For me, the most memorable session was the one entitled "Feminist Media Reform." Although two NOW employees spoke, along with Kathy Bonk, a well-known feminist media […]

Sitting up The head of Chicago’s Roman Catholic Archdiocese was improving at Loyola University Medical Center, according to his spokeswoman, Colleen Dolan. George sat up for two hours in a chair Sunday. "He’s getting a little tired doing it, but […]

Muted Meanwhile, the Holocaust project, to be adapted from a little-known 1998 memoir called "Flory: Survival in the Valley of Death," which recounts the experiences of a young Dutch Jew during World War II, is in the early stages. An […]

Amy Welborn

Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side.

Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes.

She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel.

Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.